While I have not been very present on this blog of late, it is not due to sloth. Sloth will have to wait a couple more days. I have patience left, just enough.
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This bizarre historical novel involves a Russian empress who builds a palace out of ice blocks and forces a disgraced nobleman and a deformed female jester to "marry" there, giving birth to two princes — one of whom discovers later that he's immune to cold. The story of Prince Alexander spans two centuries and three continents, and includes a ton of famous historical figures.
So it's historical fiction, but with a fantasy twist.
There's Russia and there's snow, and these two things in combination call to me.
The Colors of Cold: A New Story from The Age of Ice is available as a free e-book. I snapped it up straight away and I enjoyed it (though I'm not entirely sold on reading a full-length novel in this vein). It definitely reads more like historical fiction than fantasy, but that's not a bad thing.
St. Petersburg in the 1760s was much different than it is now. It was a city cut out generously, for growth, and it had not yet filled its own interstitial spaces. It lay like a fanciful appliqué on the burlap of my country's reality.
The author, a biomedical research scientist, blogs about writing and science at Narratology.
Excerpt.
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I'm still reading Vladimir Sorokin's Ice Trilogy. That is, I'd taken a break from it, but on vacation next week I mean to make headway through the second book.
I also picked up some lighter fare, perhaps more appropriate for poolside reading, Louise Penny's Dead Cold.
Ice, ice, cold. Do you see a trend? It's one way to escape the heat.
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